motive

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. An emotion, desire, physiological need, or similar impulse that acts as an incitement to action.

n. A motif in art, literature, or music.

adj. Causing or able to cause motion: motive power.

adj. Impelling to action: motive pleas.

adj. Of or constituting an incitement to action.

transitive v. To motivate.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. An incentive to act; a reason for doing something; anything that prompted a choice of action.

n. A motif; a theme or subject, especially one that is central to the work or often repeated.

v. To prompt or incite by a motive or motives; to move.

adj. Causing motion; having power to move, or tending to move; as, a motive argument; motive power.

adj. Relating to motion and/or to its cause

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

adj. Causing motion; having power to move, or tending to move.

n. That which moves; a mover.

n. That which incites to action; anything prompting or exciting to choise, or moving the will; cause; reason; inducement; object; motivation{2}.

n. The theme or subject; a leading phrase or passage which is reproduced and varied through the course of a comor a movement; a short figure, or melodic germ, out of which a whole movement is develpoed. See also Leading motive, under Leading.

n. That which produces conception, invention, or creation in the mind of the artist in undertaking his subject; the guiding or controlling idea manifested in a work of art, or any part of one.

transitive v. To prompt or incite by a motive or motives; to move.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

Causing motion; having power to move some one or something; tending to produce motion.

Moving or impelling force in a figurative sense.

That which moves, as a locomotive; in railroading, the locomotives collectively of a railroad: as, the super-intendent of the motive power.

n. A mental state or force which induces an act of volition; a determining impulse: specifically, a desire for something; a gratification contemplated as the final cause of a certain action of the one desiring it.

n. The design or object one has in any action; intention; purpose; the ideal object of desire.

n. One who or that which is the cause of something; an originator.

n. Movement.

n. Prevailing design.

n. . Motion; proposition.

n.Synonyms Motive, Reason, Inducement, Incentive, Impulse, consideration, prompting, stimulus. The differences among the first five of these words are suggested by the derivations. A motive is that which moves one to act, addressing the will, as though directly, and determining the choice; it is the common philosophical term, and may be collective: as, the whole field of motive. A reason is that which addresses the rational nature by way of argument for either belief or choice. An inducement leads one on by his desire for good: as, to hold out an additional inducement. An incentive urges one on like martial music. An impulse drives one on, but is transitory.

To act on as a motive, or with the force of a motive; prompt; instigate.

Examples

The stronger motive may have determined our volition without our perceiving it; and if we desire to prove our independence of motive, by showing that we _can_ choose something different from that which we should naturally have chosen, we still cannot escape from the circle, this very desire becoming, as Mr. Hume observes, itself a _motive_.

MBSS: DB, when people criticize israel for violating international law i would suspect the motive is anger over israel violating international law. if they happen to think that the existence of is israel is an injustice then they say so, as ido.

That power of the mind which we call motive, differeth from the power motive of the body. for the power motive of the body is that by which it moveth other bodies, which we call strength: but the power motive of the mind, is that by which the mind giveth animal motion to that body wherein it existeth; the acts hereof are our affections and passions, of which I am now to speak.

I do reserve the right to permanently delete things — particularly when they have little merit and when they are posted by people whose main motive is evidently to undermine my authority and therefore, as far as I’m concerned, damage the project.